The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Alex Hormozi Deep Dive: From Sleeping on a Gym Floor to Making $105M in One Day⏐Holdco Bros. Ep. #212

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Beehiiv is the newsletter platform I’ve used for over a year and a half because their data shows you exactly what’s working. Get 30% off three months at ⁠beehiiv.com/chris___Check out my newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TKOPOD.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and join my new community at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TKOwners.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.___HoldCo Bros are back. In this episode, Nik and I break down how Alex Hormozi pulled off the biggest nonfiction book launch of all time and made $105 million in one day. We walk through his full story from sleeping on the floor of his gym to selling Gym Launch and launching Acquisition.com with Layla. We explain how the Customer Financed Acquisition model actually works, why his launch strategy is a blueprint anyone can use, and what every founder can learn from his failures, focus, and wild ability to compound over time.Learn more about Nik here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://linktr.ee/cofoundersnik⁠⁠⁠⁠Share your ideas with us:[e-mail]@cofounders.comEnjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tkopod.co/p-yt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ask me a question on or off the show here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-ask⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more about me: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-cjk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn about my company: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-cof⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow me on Twitter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-x⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Free weekly business ideas newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-nl⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Share this podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-all⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Scrape small business data: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-os⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---00:00 The Phenomenon of Alex Hormozi10:01 The Early Life and Education of Alex Hormozi20:05 The Turning Point: From Corporate to Entrepreneur29:44 Building a Business: The Gym Launch Journey39:46 Overcoming Adversity: Lessons from Setbacks49:57 The Marketing Genius Behind Hormozi's Success34:29 Building a Business Empire: Acquisition.com and Beyond39:46 The Launch Strategy: $105 Million in One Day47:04 Finding Your Passion: The Key to Success54:14 Contemplation and Action: The Balance of Decision Making

Alex Hormosey is the talk of the business world this week after making $105 million in one day from his book launch, breaking the world record for the most nonfiction books sold in 24 hours. The second fastest book of all time fiction or nonfiction second only to Harry Potter, which is insane for a niche internet marketing book. So I thought what better time to dig into Alex Hormosey's backstory? How did he get to where he is today? What can we learn from it? And how exactly did he pull off this launch so successfully?

I had my business partner Nick on. We each spent about four to five hours researching for this topic. You went really deep. You're going to love it. Please share with a friend and enjoy. I think it's fair to say that as of today, Alex Hormosey is the most talked about guy in the business world. Am I right? 100%.

So Nick and I wanted to sit down today and talk about who is Alex Hormosey, aka Romozy? How is he so successful? What is his background? And how big was this launch? and how did he exactly pull off this launch? So Nick, what do you explain high level, who Alex Hormosey is?

And then we'll start from the beginning. You're probably seeing a lot of Alex Hormosey news right now because Alex Hormosey just launched, the biggest single day nonfiction book launch of all time. He sold 2.9 million books in 24 hours. The previous record sold 1.4 million books in 24 hours. So he doubled the previous record. And that was spare by Prince Harry.

What a terrible name for Prince Harry. Harry. Terrible. Like what? Poor guy. Anyways, he doubles the previous record, sells almost three million books in his first day. And now everyone's like, who the freak is Alex Hormose? Alex Hormosey right now, the biggest name of business?

Well, it's worth noting that this book Spare by Prince Harry was, is just a generalized memoir written about life by one of the most famous popular people in the world. And this guy who most people on the street have never heard of, Alex Hormosey, who wrote a about internet marketing niche business internet marketing tactics sold twice as many and it is the second fastest book of all time of any category fiction or nonfiction second only to Harry Potter which sold 11 million copies in the first 24 hours. Jeez Louise I didn't realize it was second all time. How many people have heard of Harry Potter versus Alex Hormosey? I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you the difference in search volume between the two. That's a really good point, too, because

Alex Hormosey's book's about selling. Like, it's about business. It's very specific. It's not like Prince Harry where it's like, I've watched him since he was a little kid. He's Diana's son. I want to hear about his life. He married that Kooky Lady. No, this is just like a very specific niche business book. And he doubled it. First 24 hours, he freaking doubled it. This is the Google Trans search volume for Harry Potter compared to Alex Hormosey. And this is all relative to each other. So Harry Potter is a 36 and Alex Hormozi is a one. So despite having 36 times more influence, he sold a third as many books in the same day. That's nuts.

So, okay, here's the thing about Alex. You look at him and like I did, many people like I did at first, you write him off. He's not dressed very well. He's wearing a flannel shirt. Sometimes it's cutoffs. He looks like a Jimbrough. He's got the freaking nose strip on him, right? it's not like you look at him and are like, oh, yeah, that's, that's, uh, that's Marcus

Lamonis. That's whatever Mark Cuban. And so you automatically think he's a scammer. You automatically think like, oh, this guy must be selling some product. But he's not. He's been super successful. He's had multiple exits. He sold his businesses for nine figures. And now he just had the most successful nonfiction business book launch like of all time, which is insanity. But I want to start back, way back, Chris, in the 80s. Did you know Alex Hormone's, is younger than Taylor Swift. He's born in 88. Dude.

I feel freaking old. I was born at 85. You were born at 87. Bro, Mosey was born in 88 or 89? August 16th, 88. This guy, he's born to an Iranian immigrant. So his father came over from Iran. He meets Alex's mother in medical school.

We don't know a lot about Alex's mother. Sounds like she had some personal issues. So for most of Alex's life, he's raised by a single dad. His father is a physician, fairly successful, and he just like drives home the point to Alex. You got to be successful. You got to be in the rooms where decisions are made. You got to make me proud. Very, very strict dad.

Now, they had a good relationship. Obviously, Alex lived up to him. But I have an immigrant father, right? And my dad was always like, Nicola, you have no idea how good you have it here. I grew up on dirt floor. You have a nice internet and things, right? I could see how Alex's dad is like, dude, you're born in the United States. You better freaking make this family proud and how Alex just grew up with this immense weight of wanting to make his father happy, but also living up to those expectations.

So I didn't know this. He ends up going to college. Where do you go to college? Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt University. He not only goes to college, he graduates magna cum laude, which I can't remember. That's like top 5%. Gets really good grades.

He's like the founding. member of the power lifters club or something like that in college. He's the president of his fraternity. And as I was like reading and going through his interviews, one thing stood out to me, he had this quote where he's like, I would be in the library every day from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Now, let's talk about your college experience. Chris, were you in the library every day 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Dude, no, I was starting businesses.

Didn't me? Wasn't that kind of surprising? I was actually surprised that he wasn't scheming. he was studying because there's like two layers to it right he's freaking working his butt off that's a that's a lot of hours to be working but then second he wasn't like doing side hustles he was just focusing on yeah school which i thought was interesting did he originally want to go to med school and then he ended up being you know a consultant or an investment banker because he had you know he met rich guys in his fraternity that were doing that but the famous line from him where everything

changed was he had to let his father's dream die so that his could live he said that was the heart call he ever made was calling his dad and saying, hey, dad, like, I'm moving to California. I'm not doing this whole thing anymore. So he graduates. He gets a great job. He's making six figures. He's a consultant. I can't remember which company he's a consultant for, but, you know, one of the big ones. And he was like, I just was waking up everyday hating life. I didn't want to go to work. And he had this moment, this like internal shift where he's like, I got to go do my I'm thinking. Like you said, he calls his dad. And his dad, it was a good conversation, right, Chris? Oh, great. Great conversation. How did it go? It did not go well. And there was a big rift.

And Alex talks very publicly about how him and his dad have issues. And I find that fascinating. Yeah. They didn't talk for years. Again, he goes to school, graduates in three years, has a great degree, magna cum laude, president of his fraternity, gets a job in consulting. He's, he's hitting all the marks. Like he's doing the things that his dad wanted him to do. And then all of a sudden, at 22 years old, approximately, he's like, dad, I'm sorry, I can't do this. I feel miserable. Like he has a quote where he calls it his rock top moment.

Like he doesn't call it his rock bottom moment. I liked the way that he described his rock top. It wasn't, he wasn't framing it as a victim. He was framing it as like, actually, this was a good thing for me. Like it was the momentum that I needed to get started. This kind of led me down a rabbit hole because I've noticed a lot of similarities between successful people. And I did like a mini study with AI, the help of AI, because this study hasn't been done yet. But I wanted to know, are you more likely to become a billionaire if you've had

like a loving, nurturing, successful, kind, present father or not? An absentee and or deadbeat father. And you are twice as likely to be a billionaire if you had an absentee or like father issues, daddy issues basically. Steve Jobs, Elon, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Howard Schultz, Richard Branson, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Howard Huge, Larry Page. They all had like significant daddy issues. And I believe it just puts a chip on their shoulder. Like they're always trying to prove their dad, right, who's not even around.

You know, there are plenty of examples otherwise, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates. They had like good, loving, doting fathers, Michael Bloomberg, Sergey Brin. But I just find that interesting what that can do to him. man. At least the way he describes it, they didn't have a bad relationship growing up. It's not like he hated his dad or it was adversarial. I think he actually likes dad a lot and respecting him. He just got to the point where he was like, I can't in order for my, you know, my dad's dream had to die in order for me to do what I wanted to do. Agreed. It's not like his dad left, but I think that he deep down, he's trying to be so successful to show his dad. I didn't go your path

and I'm crushing it despite that, right? Yeah. It is. I wonder if he knew his dad was going to freak out. Like I wonder if he knew like, yeah, if I tell my dad this, I'm done. Or if like his dad had just always been really supportive. And so he's like, I'm going to call my dad and just tell him and was like, wait, what? I'm out of the will. What are you talking about? Yeah.

You're right. Because maybe he was always supportive because Alex was always doing what he wanted him to do. Yeah. So he just assumed, yeah, Alex loves everything I suggest. And then as soon as he didn't, Alex learned, oh, no, he's, he's only supportive. if I follow his plan exactly, not if I do what I want to do. Got it. This moment was interesting for me because I am not like this.

Duty bound isn't the right word, but like I probably care more about what people think. And so I admire people like this. My wife, Jessica's like this. You're more like this where it's like, I'm sorry, I'm disappointing you, but this is what I'm going to go do. Like that level of conviction to follow your own path, I think is really, really admirable. and it shows up for him as we see like, you know, living on the gym floor, going bankrupt, getting scammed, money tied up. Like I understand better now why he was so convicted later is because like he burnt the bridges

back. He burnt the boats back here. It's like he didn't have anything to go back to. And I think that that's admirable. And he has a quote about this whole experience about taking this job, hating his life. He says he doesn't regret it because he says you need to justify the path that you're planning on, like, go live that path, justify it to see if it's the path you want after all. Some people, you know, they go down that investment banking route and they learn this is awesome. This is as I

expected, if not better. And he learned it wasn't for him. So you need the contrast of, wow, I know what that looked like. I would prefer to sleep on a gym floor as long as I'm in control of my own destiny. So he leaves the East Coast and he literally just drives out to California. I've heard two reports. He had $5,000 to his name, and one said he had $50,000 to his name. So somewhere in there. Somewhere in there. Five was involved.

He went to the Bay Area to San Francisco initially. Oh, up to the Bay? Yeah, to the Bay Area. Where did he go? Like, why did he go out there? Yeah, why the Bay Area. It's funny because it's funny you ask, because I dug really deep into this part of his story. I assumed that he had a friend there.

It's like, bro, you've got to come out here. Oh, you need to open a gym. You would crush it. I found no report of like a triggering event or conversation that made him decide to leave because he was in Austin. He was living in a condo that he bought at 22 in Austin, sold it, went to San Francisco. And he didn't open his gyms until he was in Los Angeles. So there's there's not a lot going on during that part of the story.

But where does he go to Shadow Sam, Sam's gym? That was in L.A. in Huntington Beach. I really like this part of it because he effectively like really quickly goes and finds this guy, Sam, he owns a gym. And Alex just goes and shadows him for a couple of months. Just learns the business kind of soup to nuts, right? After he learns the business soup to nuts, he launches his own gym. Seven figure Sam. That was his name, right? Seven figure Sam. Yeah. That's a great name. I wish that was my nickname. You know seven figure Nick. Yeah, why do they call him that? Pretty self-explanatory, bro. By the way. way, seven-figure Sam is, I found a blog article from 2011. Sam Bakhti Har came from Iran, moved to Sharon, Pennsylvania, went to Penn State, then went to L.A. So I think he had a

short jaunt in San Francisco, and then he went down to L.A. to shadow Mr. Seven-Figure Sam. I wonder if it was a family friend of some sort. Yeah, definitely could have been. I mean, the Iranians running in the same circles. So he learns the business. He launches a gym. Now, what's interesting about gyms, when we were in college, Chris called me one day, and he was like, dude, I just met with this guy who owns a Planet Fitness franchise. Have you ever heard of the Planet Fitness economics?

And I was like, no, what the freak are you talking about? He's like, bro. And you proceeded to tell me about Planet Fitness before Planet Fitness had like really exploded. They had zero locations in Tennessee. Today they probably have over 100. And I was living an hour from Tennessee. So, yeah, I remember that conversation. Planet Fitness franchisees, at least at the time, made between $400,000 and $800,000 a year of net profit.

So like, what are doing? Net profit? Net profit for one gym. Oh, my gosh. So I wanted to raise the money to open a gym in Nashville or Memphis or Knoxville. There were no Planet Fitness. That is insane to me. So anyway, so he ends up going to Southern California.

He opens a gym. It's not glamorous. United Fitness was the name. And it's still around, by the way. United. So he launches this gym. He's sleeping on the floor of the gym. I think for nine months he's there.

It really wasn't that comfortable. Everything he had was in the gym, in the business. But it starts to do decently well. It doesn't fold automatically. He ends up building that business. He gets to a string of like six of these locations. and kind of in my reading, he says, like, I kind of got bored with gems, which I thought was really interesting. It reminded me of you in the sense, you know, you started phone or store. You grew it

to several locations. This is like the same year. This was like 2010, 2011, yeah. Right. Like, you were in Alabama at the same time that he was doing this and you had multiple locations and you were just kind of like, I don't know. Now what? I think I want to do. I think I want to do something else, right? And he's he's kind of at that moment as well. It's like, I think I kind of want to do something. something else. He opened six gyms in three years. And he said that like, you know, he had two of them were partnerships with a couple guys. One was a partnership with another. Three were he owned holy. And then he had a chiropractic marketing agency and a dental marketing agency. He talks about this. And I just, I, this ring so true to me. And he said everything was messy. None of them were making

money. Sorry, keep gone. No, no, because he was a freaking hustler, man. Yeah. I texted you before this because I was like, hey, do you care if I kind of compare him to you? Like, I don't want to be looking like I'm a fanboy. It reminded me of you so much because he was just trying to to MIH. He's just trying to make it happen. And it was like, all right, I can make a little bit of money here. I could make a little bit money here. Like, he was in the experimentation phase of like trying to figure out life. And those skills all compounded. Like, it's pretty cool, right? Those things don't look the same. He's like, why the freak is he marketing for dental offices? Why the because he's marketing for chiropractors and he's got a gym that he opened whatever and then you look down

the road and it's like yeah all the skills that he learned to acquire customers through these paid acquisition channels all the skills he learned about growing media and getting attention all served him really well after he launches acquisition.com and even before that gym launch was good as well but really it's since acquisition.com that he's really grown that media brand so it's just like again that's why it reminded me of you because all these different pieces that that's that you're that look like they're not really fitting together are really just compounding on each other at this point. I don't want to jump the gun, but his like brilliant marketing tactic that maybe he learned it from seven figure Sam, maybe he invented it. I don't know. Is the same thing he's using today.

And it's the whole thing that his new book, $100 million money models is based after. And he calls it CFA, which I understand to be Chick-fil-A, but he understands it to be customer finance. Finance acquisition. Yes. CFA stands for customer finance. acquisition, which means the customer pays you upfront for something. You deliver the service. You use the customer's money to put into paid ads to get more customers. And then the cost for fulfilling the service is less than what the customer paid you up front. So you don't have to have any money up front. You collect the money. You use the money to run ads to get more customers, to collect more money to run more ads to deliver the service for a fraction of what you charged.

So first he launches these gyms, right? And they're difficult to cash flow. Then he launches an agency that is consulting for gyms, and it's a turnaround. And some of these gyms are paying him. Some of these gyms are giving him equity. Like, it just kind of turned in to a mess. And so then he decides, I'm actually going to go even harder at this, and I'm going to launch a real business. It takes all of his money.

He had like $80,000 at the time. And you can hop in here and actually tell this story the way it's supposed to go at any point. And he partners with a guy who ends up taking all of his money. Like they were supposed to launch. And then all of a sudden, boom, All of his money's gone. He can't pay his team and his staff.

The launch went well, but he can't do the fulfillment. And he's in this like quandary. He does something that frankly, I think is a Chris Kernner special. It's, Oh. How do I make $200,000 in 30 days or whatever the number? I don't remember what the number was, but it was like some astronomical number. And they kind of have to figure it out.

What did they do? Well, so this was kind of lost everything twice, right? He got his partner. Basically, and what his partner did was they had a shared bank account and he just withdrew everything. That's it. Most partners have shared bank accounts. It wasn't even like it was like a crypto scam or something. Right, right. And then he lost quote everything, one to a payment processor for six months, which happened to us, $400,000, happened to Nick and I, thanks to PayPal, screen PayPal. Yeah. So he had that happen. And then he also

had an issue where, well, let me back up, the CFA, the customer finances the acquisition. That's what he built everything on. One marketing hack and it started in the gym. His sales pitch was run paid ads to people that wanted to lose weight. The people would come in and say, hey, you're going to give me $500 for a six week weight loss challenge. But good news, you're going to get it all back. If you lose the weight that you think you can lose, we'll give it all back to you. Guess what? They don't lose the weight. So he uses that money to put into more paid ads to get more people to come into the gym and say, hey, $500 weight loss challenge. We'll give it back. Some people do, you know, lose the weight and he gives it back, but most people don't. That's the whole offer, right? The customers are

financing the acquisition of the customers because it's a six week challenge. That's what he did for $100 million money bottles. That was the whole thing the gym launch was built on. That's the whole offer that his gyms were built on. And he's still doing it today. So I just think it's interesting to pause and just look at that as a framework of one offer, one marketing hack, one growth method can scale infinitely across dozens of industries across decades. It's just like a first principle that is always true. And I find that fascinating. Well,

and the thing that happened is, so he launches this business. His partner steals his money, boom, money's gone. Then he's like, I already committed to these people. I got to figure out how to pay them.

I know what I'll do. I called someone to tell them I can't do this anymore. And they said, I'll pay you $6,000 if you just like, teach me how to do it. He was like, oh, I can do that way.

this is this is cool they can pay me the money this is going to be great so he then sells a bunch of those which is effectively what gym launch becomes to teach them how to launch their their gyms and that's when the money gets held up by a payment processor that's when he's just sitting there like are you freaking kidding me my money's sitting there in the bank account it's going to be six months until you're going to release it from me what the f am i supposed to do and that i get yeah that freaking happened to both to us it freaking sucked it was February and they're like yeah August is when we'll get the funds released to you guys half a million dollars.

But I think it was the pain of those two things where he then goes into gym launch and is like, all right, look, this is how you get money up front and this is exactly the strategy. This is how you run the paid ads. This is how you get paid up front. You take that money and then you just reinvest it back

into paid ads. And this way you're getting cash first and then you're able to reinvest. You're not bringing them in, fulfilling the service and then getting the cash. I think that is such an interesting shift like you're saying in his business mentality that has funded the rest of his growth.

It wouldn't happen had he not gone through the pain of being scammed and then having his money tied up with PayPal or whoever the payment processor was. And fun fact, he was so worried about payment processors for his launch last week that he had 29 payment processors lined up and they were rotating through them throughout the 12-hour launch every 20 minutes or so. Dude, I would get his risk. Of course. Absolutely.

And like on the one hand, I get it from these payment processes perspective. basically what they say is, well, you're a new customer, so we don't know what the chargebacks or refunds are going to be. So we are going to hold a percentage of your funds for six months, because that's whatever, the period of time. And then after six months, we'll release the funds because we'll have enough data to see how much we should hold on an ongoing basis. I think a lot of people think, oh, I'm going to launch a business. I'm going to sell all these products on e-commerce. I'm going to have so much money. What they don't realize is like it's not a worst nightmare, but it's pretty close to the worst nightmare. If your business does crush it, you're going to

have cash flow problems because his payment processes are not going to pay out all of the dollars. And you're going to have to figure out how to fund the working capital. That's happened to us. How many times? Six, eight. It's terrible. It's not just for new businesses either. It's for unexpected volume increases too, like a Black Friday event, right? So all of this kind of came to a head in 2016.

That was a big pivotal year for him because he had all these gyms. He had these agencies. He had nine different businesses. He had just met Layla. They were dating. and he calls himself an alcoholic and he would drink a bottle of whiskey or half a bottle of whiskey every night. And one night he was drinking and driving 60 miles per hour. He got pull over by a cop and he hit a car that was parked on the shoulder, a parked car. No one was injured. He walked away

from it, but he was going 60 miles per hour. He hit a car in front of a cop. Got put in jail. Layla bailed him out the next day. And that was like the massive turning point in his life. He was basically saying like, what are you doing, man? Like, what are you doing? You have all these businesses and you're not making any money. You're drinking. Like I thought, like, isn't that why you came here was to live a better life? This isn't better.

He had an attention coach. Did you know that? He hired an attention coach. Yeah. The coach said to him, your stress is because of unmade decisions, period, end of story. You have all these businesses you need to shut down, all these hard conversations you need to have and you're not doing it. That's where your stress is coming from. So you need to sit down.

You need to call your business partners. You need to say, I'm out. You need to sell your shares. Give away your shares. It doesn't matter. And then your life will be better. And so he said over the next 48 hours, after getting bailed out of jail, he called his business partners and had hard conversations.

He fire sale his gyms. He basically gave away four, sold two for like 20 grand, shut his stuff down. And at that point, he's like, we're going all in on gym launch. And after that point, he's, when he had those the theft and the payment processor and all that but i think that that d y is really what changed slash broke him do that really hit me hard that's uh your distress is from unmade decisions yeah and like we've both talked about it yeah like we've both gone through gone that process like like i've been there like and at this at the same time when he's going through

the payment processor issues he's getting calls from customers who are like where's my money why hasn't it been refunded? He's got to find other payment processors, probably sketchy ones, to process these payments. He's like doing it in $50,000 tranches at a time. Like as I was like reading about this, it just triggered kind of the last two, not the last two years, but that two year period of time when we were launching mining syndicate and even perfume vending where you're like, oh, it's cool. We're getting a ton of business, but then we're not able to process it.

Like it's freaking stressful. And if you are then not focused on one business, it just compound. Yeah. We didn't even talk about another thing that happened. He was flying out to gyms, flipping them in person or launching them in person. And he went out to this one. And his whole deal was like, I'm going to collect all this money for these six week challenges. And then I'm going to upsell them on your gym and on supplements. And then you keep everything thereafter. So it was a good offer because he got paid directly from the customers. The gyms didn't have to pay him. And the gyms collected everything thereafter. And so he went to one gym to do this. And then after he flew back

home, the gym emailed all the customers and said, hey, just file chargebacks on all those and we'll charge you half as much. Just pay us directly. And so he was hit with hundreds of chargebacks from one gym because the gym owner just wanted to capture all that revenue for himself. F that guy. What's it? Alex? Name and shame. Okay. Well, it just goes to show, which we've lived through this. Like, when you do all of these things, your surface area for fraud and scams is just massive. And your surface area for luck is massive. But that's the tradeoff you make.

It's massive. And then it's also massive when you add massive value. Because like he made a ton of money. And so these gym owners are like, well, that's not fair. I want that money. Right. There's like this jealousy component. He just goes home.

They got to run the business now. I got to freaking run this business now. What the freak, bro. What's interesting is he actually just went on my, first million and said if he had to start all over again, this is the type of business he would do, is he would go out, find a high ticket item. He said he would focus in the health services space, but find a high ticket item and just go find who's going to do the fulfillment and say, what will you pay me per lead? And they're like, I'll pay you $500. He's like, okay, great.

And then he's going to go out and charge $2,000. And then he's just going to keep the difference. So business model that works, work for him. Yeah. Continues to work for him. Botox, teeth whitening, anything with a lab code, I think he said. So when he launches gym launch, it goes so freaking well that in the first year, they do $24 million in sales. Do you know what their net margins were in 2020 or in their first year? It was like 60% or something. It's like $17 million. Yeah.

So in like an 18 month span, he goes from sleeping on the floor of a gym. Basically being homeless, we can't forget the Laila Hormozzi quote of, I would live with you under a gym if it came to that. Right. Under a bridge. Under a bridge. In a gym. I'm so dumb. Oh my gosh.

That's what I meant. But she probably did say that. Dude, he goes from that to making $17 million in a year. Do you know how much money that is? Dude. I feel like the duration of compounding is directly correlated to the duration of how quickly you can turn things around, right?

You just grind and you compound and you test and you growth hack, all these things for a decade. And you get some hits, you get some losses, you get scammed, you get defrauded, yada. The longer you do that for, compounding your learnings and your lessons, equals the shorter the amount of time it's going to take to turn things around for you. I've experienced that myself. You're going to make a lot of money this year. But for people who don't know you, it's like, oh, of course, that guy's successful.

He's freaking crushing it. For people who do know you, like me, it's been this for a long time. And then all of a sudden, it just rocket ships up. It wasn't this up and to the right consistently for a period of time. It just compounded very, very quickly. And it's that same principle that you just said, right? Like Alex is grinding for a really long time, hits. And that first year, they just freaking crush it.

I think that it was 2018 was their first full year. Of gym launch? Of gym launch. 2019, they introduced a new product, which is selling supplements. And I think they get to 36 million. in that second year. And they just- Prestige Labs.

Prestige Worldwide. Prestige Worldwide. I love that company. DeLift-Lift shrimp, I think, was one of their spokesmen. John Ralphio continues to compound. And then in 2021, they get an offer from a company to buy 66% in the company. And what Alex says is at that moment, they had taken about $43,000 of distribution, $43 million. $43 million of distributions up to that point.

and then they got another 20, 30, 40. I can't remember the exact number. It was like, that was also 43 million what they sold for. Okay. Okay. And then they got another 43 million. And he was sitting on like $60 million of cash in 2021.

So think about that. 2017 to 2021 is only four years. It's not that long. He goes from broke. Broke as a joke to just having $60 million in his pocket. And that's when they launch Acquisition.com. That's when they kind of go. to this new Holtco model.

Yeah. It's crazy. It is crazy. And he says he made a half a billion dollar mistake by not launching a CRM. Basically what Alan was, it was a lead management software for Jim's to handle all the leads that he was teaching them how to get. And he said the CRM was a much bigger market. It would have been a half a billion dollar business.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I read that as well. It was a good software. I think the other thing that he acknowledges, though, was like hindsight's 2020. How was he supposed to know? And yeah, maybe that was a $100 million miss, but he also had a $100 million win in there. And it's allowed him to do what he did next.

I think what was interesting for me is that right after he sells, they're not sitting on their hands. I want to say it's like very quickly after. One day. He said the next day. That's right. The next day, acquisition.com. Like acquisition, it's a thing. He's launched this company where they're going to be now essentially launching a family office, investing in other companies to grow other companies.

Yeah, you know Russell Brunson. He's here in Boise. For those that don't, for those that don't, he's the ClickFunnels founder, Internet Marketing OG guru. He wrote dot com secrets and expert secrets. Basically what Alex Hormosey has done has taken these webinar principles, these marketing, internet marketing, make money online principles and boiled them down to the highest, the best and highest use he could think of, which is acquiring other companies.

previously it had only been done for like high ticket course sales and and and PDFs and webinars and whatever he said why don't we just take those same first principles and apply him to acquiring companies and building the next Berkshire Hathaway and he's doing it quite successfully at least appears from the outside if he was just a typical gym bro he could have just got and bought like Lamborghinis and for all reasons and taking trips and pictures on a yacht and like just blown the $60 million but he doesn't he takes that money and they start investing in companies so do you know what their investment criteria was I thought this was cool No, please.

Okay. So 2021, they launch Acquisition.com. This was their original investment criteria. Asset light, high cash flow, sales focused service, and digital product businesses. You can think of those as two different things, right? Sales focused service, that could be a home services company. It could be something somebody actually comes and physically provides and digital product business. So digital product would be a course, education, marketing, sales.

etc, et cetera. I mean, that hits all the things. Like all of his learnings, he's like, all right, I don't want to be asset heavy. I don't want to be in a bunch of gyms. I want to be high cash flow because I'm tired of playing this game where we're worried about what our cash is going to be. And then he doubles down on his superpower, which is sales. Like systematizing those sales processes is kind of one of his superpowers.

And he's like, all right, I'm just going to take that. Find companies that need really good sales systems and processes. Boop. I overlay it. Instantly, they're creative when I invest in those companies. It sounds a lot like what our thesis used to be, right? Sales heavy, operations, lights, service businesses. And you and I know at least people that have gone to his seminars and people that have been

portfolio companies. I know two people that either are or were acquisition.com portfolio companies. And I asked them like off the record, listen, you know, between me and you, this hormone guy. What are we talking about? Is he for real? Is he legit? It's just you me and the limitless pendant.

Yeah, that's it. That's it. every single person I have talked to has said he is worth his weight in gold. I would have given, had I known the value he would add, I would have given him so much more equity. Like everything he says and touches just turns to gold. It's kind of weird because we've now started to get to know people who know who run in these circles. And I have I have not seen anybody yet dog on Alex Hormosey who's actually either gotten to know him or worked with him. They're like, yeah, he's the real deal.

He really does work hard. He really does believe those things. And his success is verifiable. He literally did walk away with $60 million after he sold his company. Now, the strategy that he took post-sale, I think, is the reason he gets the hate. So let's articulate what his strategy has been. His strategy has been high volume, value-packed information given away for free or almost free. That's been his strategy.

And he's just constantly putting out content around how to grow, how to scale, how to build your business. business, cheap books, et cetera, et cetera. I think that that's kind of the reason why he gets hate, right, is because it feels like he's a guru, because usually only gurus are putting out that kind of content, don't you think? Oh, yeah, yeah. A guru is defined by the quality of their content, right? Not in how they deliver it, in my opinion. I would think the most gurus do not deliver on the quality that they promise. And I feel like he over delivers. Yeah, I guess I was, I was meaning in the sense of people's misconception, not misconception, people's perception of that word guru of like, oh, it's somebody who's saying this is what you're supposed to do. They've never actually done it

or they're making it sound easier. Like, yeah, Ty Lopez, knowledge. I tweeted, I said, I'm 100% certain that Alex Hormosey will go down as one of the greatest business minds to have ever lived. I've never heard anyone trash talk him that has actually taken the time to listen to his business advice. Yes, he sells stuff that comes to the territory. One of the commenters said, Oh yeah. Yeah. So let me get this straight. Bezos, Jobs, Musk, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Hormozzi. And my reply to him was, yes. Like, yes. Here's something a little controversial. Rockefeller, Carnegie, a couple hundred years ago, if they're alive today and they start digging

around on the internet and they learn that you can make this much money doing what Hormosey does, they're selling courses. I'm going to call it right now. Yeah, they were building railroads because that was the opportunity. They were opportunists at the time, right? If they were internet marketers, they would be making money in opportunistic ways as internet marketers. So this is something I've been thinking about. I agree with you.

Leverage in all the reading that I've done, knowledge, books. You know, Hormosey's obsessed with this leverage concept. It's like, can I get more out of the same input? If you look at all of those men, mainly, that you just named, what they were able to do is take advantage of a new type of distribution. You have the early industrialists who built manufacturing plants and all of a sudden they were able to create massive amounts of quantity given the way that they set up their new production processes. Bill Gates was able to distribute his software because now it's a much

smaller cost per unit in a new way that nobody before him was able to do. Bezos launches on the back of the internet, Amazon. Now he has this massive new distribution channel. Mark Zuckerberg creates Facebook on the back of the internet as well. Alex is kind of just the next iteration of that. He's realized, oh, the attention economy is real. And this is a new distribution mechanism. And so I don't have the money or the background or the investors to go and compete with everybody else who does it the traditional way.

Raise money, whatever. Have success inherited. So I'm going to take my money. I'm going to grow an audience. And then I'm going to use that audience as a distribution channel. And the way I'm going to build the audience by giving away stuff for free, building trust and then I'll do the ask. And then I'll ask them for $6,000 for 200 bucks. Yeah. No, not even a chuckle. Sorry. Sorry. You were locked in. I'm sorry. All entrepreneurs do is they're just

feeling out where the energy is. Like they're just testing all kinds of things. Oh, what's giving me energy? I'm going to follow that. Like water flowing to the lowest point. That's all I do. Right. And so like, did I ever plan to be an influencer? Absolutely not. But when I start like, when, The first time I tweeted, it was just a test. Test everything except drugs, right? It's another test. Oh, there's some feedback. They like it.

Let's tweet again. Oh, this guy just tweeted. That was interesting. I'm going to try that hook. Oh, that did even better. I'm just finding energy, right? Next thing I know, I'm a freaking guru, right? This wasn't in my master plan, you know?

It was. No. Another way to put it is if Alex Hormosey was alive 200 years ago and he was in the same kind of rooms, living the same kind of life as Rock or Carnegie, do you think he'd be building railroads or starting oil companies? Yeah. Why isn't it true the other way around? He's an opportunist. Yeah, there was a quote, I don't remember who said it, but they were like, if Bill Gates was living a thousand years ago, he would have been Genghis Khan, which is like, Bill, okay, what's funny to think of? It is funny to think about. Him jumping over a

chair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they are the type of people who just had the mentality of where's the arbitrage. Cool. I found the opportunity. I'm going to go out of, 110%. And that's what Alex is doing. He's like, okay, there's an arbitrage right now in intention. That's when I'm going to hammer home every single day. Yeah. So that's part of his media strategy, right? He's like trying to build as much trust as possible. So he starts putting out social media content and then written content as well. And he has two books. What were his books, Chris? Well, his first book is $100 million offers. And I've read it. It's an amazing book. I refer people to it all the time. I haven't read his other two, but I assume they're just as good.

$100 million offers was a huge book. His launch was an insane success second only to his launch last week. And then his middle book, his second book, $100 million leads, was like, okay, it was third of three as far as like the size and scale of the launch and the number of reviews and accolades it got. His books were for me, the type of response where it was like, I didn't want to like them. And I loved them. I was like, okay, I guess I'll read this because it sounds like people are making it a big deal. And then you read it and you're like, oh, my gosh, this guy is the way he looks is not the way I would think he thinks. He's a great thinker.

Yeah. He's a great thinker. And they're not, the thing I love about it is they're not principles that are just new. He's just effectively repackaging these sales principles and saying like, hey, entrepreneurs, did you not know this is what you're supposed to do? This is how you follow up. This is how you run a campaign. This is how you ask for the sale. This is how you price things.

This is how you anchor. Like, it's just very clean in the way that he communicates it to the normal man. And it's dense. Like, you read books sometimes and you might get one good point from a chapter. I find good points from every paragraph, if not every sentence. Like, it's just a book that you can tell he rewrote and rewrote dozens of times, like extreme attention to detail. Totally agree. He launches those books.

It's going well. And then all of a sudden he's like, hey, guys, I'm going to be launching a new book. And he's been teasing this. Like, you're going to be surprised by this launch. He's going on a podcast tour. And now we're here, Chris. Tell us about the launch. So he spent the last six weeks on podcast, most importantly, running paid ads.

This guy spent over $4 million on paid ads, eating his own dog food. He was spending the money that he was receiving in pre-sales for this book. Right. So on the surface, it's like, taking so much risk. Who spends $4 million in ads to sell a book? No one. And he's looking at it like, there's no risk. I'm selling the book and I'm using the funds from the book, the pre-sales, to put more ads into the book.

And he's tracking everything. He knows how much every registrant to the webinar email is worth. And he's not just like blindly throwing money into ads. At one point, he was putting $200,000 to $400,000 a day into ads at its peak, which is insane. This is a book. He had over a million views on his live stream. He streamed for three days straight, 10 to 12 hours per day, which is not a thing. Does not happen.

And he sold a 200 book offer at $6,000, but he angled it as a 200 book donation. He led the webinar with the pain point, which is like webinars 101. The pain point being the average business owner in America only takes home $48,000 a year. I want to do good to the world by providing free business education to business owners. So if you buy this $6,000 package, then I'm going to quote unquote donate these 200 books to business owners on your behalf, which was all a growth hack to get the Guinness World Records for most books sold, to hack the New York Times bestseller list, the Amazon bestseller list, and to make $105 million in one day.

Dude, not only that, he just recruited every single. person to become a salesman for his book. 22,000 affiliates. Yes. Oh, what did he pay them? A percentage of sales? No. No.

Like access to a Slack. They paid for the privilege to be an affiliate. So now they've got 200, how many people have I seen on Twitter that are like, I got 200 bucks. Damn me if you want one. Yeah. What do I do with these? There's going to be kids in Africa reading lime green books.

Wearing like Utah Jazz 1999 NBA champion shirts. Western Conference Champions, Sacramento Kings. That's freaking funny. But no, I'm like, every single one of those people are now, because he spent all that time building up this goodwill with people, they're bought in. Like, they were, it didn't really matter what he was selling in that webinar. He could have asked for anything. And they would have been like, I'm in, Alex. You're like, you've already delivered all of this value to us.

Take my money. Did you do the $6,000? No. No. Were you even close? Be honest. No. I didn't watch the live stream.

Like, all of this research, though, I did. for this podcast was done after the fact. I saw people on tweeting about it, but Saturday I'm working in the yard, dude. I got holes to dig. I was very close. I was very close to buying it. Yeah. And then I was like, well, because he's so good at selling. Like I knew if I watched it, I was going to buy it. Well, and what was crazy is like he turned it into an event and a spectacle. Yeah. It wasn't just, oh, I've got good sales processes and I know which funnel people are going to go to. It was an infomercial. And like he created this event where people would attend and they watched it. And they were talking about it with their friends.

Like it was different. It was really cool. Well, there's a lesser known guy that people, most people have never heard of. His name's Jason Fladleyan. And he's basically Russell Brunson, except not nearly as possible, except not nearly as popular. Jason Flatland invented this webinar structure. And then Russell Brunson packaged it in a really pretty way and sold it in his book, dot com secrets and expert secrets.

And his whole stick was get the book for free, just pay $2. $20 shipping. Here's a secret. Shipping a book costs $4. Okay. So it's not free. But that's fine. That's fine.

So Alex Hormosey paid for this launch, Jason Fladleyan, $25,000 to see the slides that he uses for his webinars. $25,000 to see a PowerPoint. And why wouldn't he? Like, how much do you think that moved the needle on this $105 million that he made in a day? Well, the other thing that it did. is like it became an infomercial and then you're like watching the sales tick up and what is that create chris you've got all these guys mainly guys who are like oh Alex Homo is he selling this thing

oh people starting to post that they bought it 100,000 people yet over a million views but let's just say concurrently 100,000 people watching what does that do to them it creates FOMO yeah and loyalty yeah because they already have the loyalty but also I don't want to miss out what Chris just bought Chris just bought 200 books. Okay, I'll donate $6,000 to Alex for him to give me 200 books. What an amazing reframing of that. Hey, did you buy that newest Harry Potter book? No, no, no, no.

I donated $100 to J.K. Rowling and I got the whole set. Dude, there are going to be so many internet marketers in Kenya this year. They are going to be so skilled at slang in webinars. It's so good. in all seriousness, like what a playbook for a launch. I don't care what you're launching. It doesn't have to be a book, anything. Why would you not just copy this playbook? Yeah, you're not going to have four million dollars to spend on ads. But one thing he said in his announcement is the whole reason I'm doing this launch this way is because this is what I'm talking about in the book. I'm eating my own dog food, the six week challenge, the CFA principle. Like the only reason I'm selling this book instead of giving it away like the previous ones is just because I want to. It's just because I want to. show you that the book works i don't even want this money i don't even know what i'm going to do i don't do i need an extra hundred and five million dollars no i don't need that oh julie no it's it's just creating it's creating more credibility it adds to the flywheel and he's just increased his

surface area like the the 200 book donation is pretty freaking cool he calls it an ignorance tax right Like buy this book because the the price of being ignorant to certain business tactics that can bring you from $48,000 a year to $480,000 a year is very expensive, right? So what's $6,000 in the grand scheme of things if it helps you learn and not be ignorant to these cool offers and tactics? Let me ask you a question, $6,000. Do you think it's worth it? Let's say you didn't read any of his other books, but you know everything you know about

him. Do you think $6,000 for the books, and I think you get like a webinar, to get access to his GPT, if you're a business owner who really knows nothing about the sales and the lead generation process, et cetera, do you think $6,000 is a reasonable price point to pay to get that level of education? I think the 80-20 rule applies, and it's worth every penny of buying that $30 book. I agree with you. You could go and cobble it together. You could buy the books individually, whatever. But I do think that if you implement the stuff that he gives away in those books, well, yeah, that's the big if.

That's a massive if, though. And statistically speaking, the vast majority of people will not. They won't even crack the book. That's just human nature. But that's on them. It is on them. But I also don't think it's a crazy, he was getting knocked. People were like, I have nothing to sell you, Alex Hormosey.

And then it was like a screenshot of him selling that. I didn't have a problem with it. Anyways, I think I'm fan-moying out anyways. So Chris called me on Monday, Tuesday, and you were like, hey, when you have emergency whole co-brose, let's just deep dive on this. And I was like, you had me at hay. And so I did a bunch of research. Here's one thing that I just loved about him, because I saw some of my relationship with

my own father in this. His level of conviction was crazy. He was smart enough to go to Harvard Business School. It's obvious. I didn't realize that. but he was smart enough to do that. And he just was like, no, I got to go do my own thing. So he pivots there.

He was smart enough. He shut down his chain of gyms. They were probably doing decently well. And he's like, no, we're going to go in a new direction. He sold off multiple companies after he had like grown this portfolio because he's like, no, I need a focus. But I think like that level of focus and conviction is incredibly admirable. And you need to find what you are focused on and what you truly believe in.

and go for it. For me, that really stood out in doing this research with him. I would say one big unlock I had was that the level of focus and conviction he has is directly correlated with the level of love he has for the game. Because if you, like, you're not going to sit there and grind 12 hours a day every single day. If you don't love it, like you just won't. I can sit here at the computer and grind all day. If I didn't have a family, I would be exactly where he is.

I would be at this computer, just typing away growth hacking all day every day. And I wouldn't feel like this hero with this an amazing work ethic. I would feel like I'm just doing what I truly love, you know? And so he loves it. He's in the game. And he's the perfect testament of don't interrupt compounding. And I've talked about this a lot. But in my opinion, compounding is staying in the game with one business, 100 businesses or whatever.

Just stay in the game and you'll win. And if you find product market fit, then you, you're not going to be distracted by shiny objects. But if you are distracted by shiny objects, then that is a signal that you don't have product market fit. And maybe there's something worth looking at. Okay. So I'm going to add to that.

I'm going to share this really quickly, like clip of his that's pretty popular. You've probably seen it. I want you to listen to the question and then listen to his answer. So he's in a podcast and this podcaster asks him this final question. I ask every guest at the end of the podcast, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received, but I'll change it for you a bit. Oh, wow. If all your books, videos, and tweets were erased from the internet forever, and all you had was the next 60 seconds, what's the most useful thought you could leave to the world? Figure out what you want, ignore the opinions of

others, and do so much volume that it would be unreasonable, that you would be unsuccessful. And then he and the podcast host just like stare at each other dreamily in the news. I love the look on his face as he says that. I know. That's the quote. I mean, that's Alex Romosey, right? Find what you want. Ignore the opinions of others and do an unreasonable amount of work or do so much work that it would be unreasonable for you to not be successful. I think that's his ethos.

Yeah. Volume negates luck, is what he says. Volume negates luck. Volume also creates value. I thought that was really interesting. The other one that I thought was very interesting is the importance of finding the right partner. And so he's got, I think any of us have two very, very important partners in our lives.

spouse and business partner. He happened to find his business partner and a spouse in the same person, which was Layla. And so what's really cool is he talks really positively of her. Like he, he admires her. Like he loves her, not just as like, oh, she's my wife and I love her, but he's like, no, dude, I respect the crap out of her. She's the CEO of their companies. He went out. He did kind of like all the marketing and he just handed off the infrastructure to Layla. So like this story's not told in the way we're telling it unless he had had a business partner like Layla and a life partner like Layla. She just happens to be the same person. But I did think that that dynamic was really interesting. I also think the flip side of that is he compounded the time that it took

for him to find the right thing. We're like many people take years and he was just like, F it. I'm going. I don't care. And so it's like he just shortened the timeline for it and went through all the crap that he went through. I think the most important thing he said in that clip is find out what you want to do. Like don't gloss over that. You've got to find that out. Most people like treat that decision as if it's like, where am I eating lunch today? You know, oh, I got to register for my classes. What's my major? Okay. I guess I'll do that for the rest of my life. That doesn't make sense. And then most people change their major or they learn that it's not for them like you just got to find out like what you truly love like there I truly believe there are no

lazy people they're just people that haven't found what they truly love to do yeah I agree with that and I think you know we don't spend enough time sitting and thinking and contemplating what we want to do I I had Sam par on my podcast and that was a amazing conversation because in the middle conversation he's like yeah I just sit and think for a couple hours a day yeah what what you were like Sam no offense but are you autistic Sam, be honest. He's like, no, I just sit in my office and I just like think about stuff. Like, what the freak?

But even in that answer that Alex gave, there's a big gap when the kid asks him the question and he just like sits and thinks about it deeply. I think that contemplating is good, but contemplation without action is wasted time. And he contemplates and then makes a decision. And that's admirable. I contemplate. And sometimes I don't make him a decision. You don't contemplate and make a decision.

Sounds about right. So like, anyways, that part was really interesting. It's like, yeah, he thinks about it. He thinks deeply, makes a decision. On to the next thing. I'm in. Well, is that a wrap? It's a wrap, Jack.

All right, what do you think? Please share it with a friend, and we'll see you next time on the Kerner office.